Tuesday’s actions could signal how the new majority will come down on future business-related disputes and could spark state lawmakers, whose annual session begins in March, to consider business-backed legislation to address issues that the old court had foiled.

Attorney General Pam Bondi claims a state law bars Miami Beach from gradually increasing its minimum wage to $13.31 an hour in 2021. The case also has drawn attention from local governments, which have sided with Miami Beach.

Project Share was born 18 years ago after Roseanne Stocker drove through rural areas of deep poverty and teamed up with her father to provide toys for 30 children. The project has grown every year since.

Florida student assistance grants would grow by $121 million. Senators also want to double the state’s matching grants for “first generation” college and university students to a total of $10.6 million.

It’s time for big chains to strengthen local economies by keeping food purchases local and ending worker exploitation. But they don’t. Meanwhile, writes Anna Meyer, look for locally owned restaurants that source local and support raising the minimum wage for all workers.

In Florida if you can’t show that you’re working or meet the work requirements some other way, you get penalized and lose your food stamps for the following month. If you fail to meet the requirements again, it’s a three-month sanction and then six months.

There is a lack of funding for public defense in every state, and people charged with low-level misdemeanors, often poor minorities, suffer the most as public defender offices focus their few resources on felony cases.

The requirement was suspended in the aftermath of the recession, but starting Jan. 1, all able-bodied, childless adults 18 to 49 were required to work, get job training or volunteer 20 hours a week to receive food stamps . Otherwise, they’re limited to three months of food assistance in each 36-month period.

The restriction means low-income Floridians could lose access to the organization’s health-care and family-planning services. Planned Parenthood said it has more than 67,000 patients in Florida annually.

Four years ago Chris Timmons, now a columnist and fellow at a Florida think tank, lost his job and needed food stamps. “It did not make me feel like a moocher,” he writes. Yet Florida makes welfare recipients feel just that.

It’s 1.1 million fewer than in 2013, but almost a third of the uninsured are eligible for Obamacare but haven’t enrolled, 15% have chosen not to enroll in employee-provided health care, and the rest are uninsured for a variety of other reasons.

The increase, due to the Affordable Care Act, is unprecedented since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid 50 years ago. Expanding Medicaid–as Florida did not–would have added to the ranks of the insured even more.

The world’s poorest countries are not characterized by naive trust in capitalism, but by utter distrust, which leads to heavy government intervention and regulation of business. Under such conditions, capitalism does not thrive and economies remain poor.

Flagler County Health Department Administrator Patrick Johnson is resigning at the end of the month to take a public health post in North Carolina as county departments in Florida see their roles shift and diminish.